This invention relates generally to web-based information and, more specifically, to discovery and tracking of web-based advertisements.
Publisher websites such as newspaper web pages, television station web pages, web log web pages, magazine web pages, social networking web pages, microblogging web pages, and other internet-based online publishing sources often include advertisements for companies and products. Advertisements on a publisher website may include images, videos, text, animations, or other visual or audio messages. These advertisements are sometimes referred to as advertisement creatives.
Advertisements may be placed on a publisher web page by a variety of sources. A company may purchase an advertisement block on the publisher web page directly from the publisher, through an advertising network, through an advertising exchange, through a demand side platform (DSP) or through some combination of these or other advertising channels.
However, in some situations, when an advertisement is placed on a publisher web page, it is visibly obscured by another advertisement or other content on the web page. In these situations, an advertiser may believe that their advertisement is being viewed by users of the web page, when it is, in fact, visibly obscured by other content on the web page. Obscured advertisements of this type can negatively affect the advertiser by allowing the advertiser to pay for a service it is not receiving and to misinterpret the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
It can also be difficult or impossible for a publisher, an advertising network, an advertising exchange, or advertising channel to determine directly the visibility of an advertisement on a particular web page to individual users of the web page, using, for example code included with an advertisement, because the layout and positioning of objects on the web page can be dependent on the application that renders the web page and on inaccessible portions of the code for the webpage.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide improved systems for discovering and tracking of internet-based advertisements that can distinguish between obscured and unobscured advertisements.